Santos2003Deitcher Artforum

Last week while on Facebook, Visual AIDS program manager Ted Kerr was visiting writer David Deitcher's wall and saw the above image and following text related to Hudson, an important and sweet fixture within the New York art world who championed many Visual AIDS Artist members, including Rene Santos whose work is featured in the image above. Deitcher kindly gave his permission for the image and his text to be shared on the Visual AIDS blog.

Artforum has published a number of fine remembrances about the singularly named, and altogether singular, Hudson, whom I met in 1982 through our friend, the late Bill Olander, at the opening of Bill's memorable show, ART AND SOCIAL CHANGE (Allen Memorial Museum, Oberlin, OH, 1982-83). Hudson and I remained friends ever since. Some time in 2003, he phoned to express his concern about Jack Bankowsky's plan to edit a special issue of AF devoted to the 1980s. Hudson feared that our 1980s would be omitted from the magazine. After reminding me that he ran full-page ads for Feature, Inc., in every issue, Hudson asked me to write 'copy' for a special ad he was devising for that special issue. Above, and available for download from this page is that ad. Hudson wrote the lucid lines about Feature. I wrote the rest for this Trojan Horse of an ad, which secreted editorial copy into the magazine that otherwise surely would not have included them.
David Deitcher
New York, 2014

For more information please visit the following links
Hudson's Artforum obit
Jerry Saltz's obit for Hudson
Learn more about Feature, Inc including Hudson's history

Rene Santos